Trying to convince wife I need a winch.

The #1 brand of winch is Warn, most of their winches are US made, only their entry level winches like the VR line are imported. Warn's M8000 is a very good lower-cost Warn that would hold its value should you ever decide to sell it. Warn will always be able to provide parts for their winches, not so the other brands.

I dunno who's in second-place because most of the others are all made in China. The two brands I would definitely not go with are those from Harbor Freight Tools and Smittybilt aka Shittybilt.
 
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Keep an eye out on Craigslist and eBay for a good deal. They're out there. Picked up my warn xd9000 off of craigslist for $140. She was a little rough but a little elbow grease and a few parts from warn (reason enough to go warn) and she's good as new.
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Oh wow, that turned out frigging awesome... nice job Northwood!!!

I'm curious why that Warn used metric hardware. Do you know if it was originally an export model? :confused:
 
I'm curious why that Warn used metric hardware. Do you know if it was originally an export model? :confused:

As far as I know their only non-US made "jeep sized" model is the new VR series. I'm not sure why they used metric hardware for the studs (everything else was standard) and I never came across anything while looking for parts including serial and model number searches that suggested it was manufactured anywhere other than here. Beats me
 
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Don't laugh guys but I wanted a winch for the longest time and could never justify buying one. I bought A Harbor Freight 12k for my son's tj for Christmas a couple of years back, I figured- for $299.00 (sale price) how could I go wrong? Well I have to say that this winch is very well built, my wife could not argue with the price so I got one for my XJ and she now has one on her Rubicon. Never had a failure between the three! For that price you have to have one! Sure I wanted a Warn but for $1400 that was never gonna happen and even if the Harbor Freight was a piece of crap I could still buy 4 for the price of 1 Warn.
 
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I've been looking at a Warn VR10,000. Even though they're made off shore they seem to get decent reviews as an entry level winch which is all I'll likely need.
 
Don't laugh guys but I wanted a winch for the longest time and could never justify buying one. I bought A Harbor Freight 12k for my son's tj for Christmas a couple of years back, I figured- for $299.00 (sale price) how could I go wrong? Well I have to say that this winch is very well built,
So you tore the winch apart and got inside its motor, examined its bearings to find it uses bushings instead, checked into the metallurgy of its planetary gears, etc.? How did you arrive at the conclusion it is "very well built"?

Or did you really just look it over externally to find it has a nice powder coated finish and it is nice and heavy?

There are reasons why it sells for only $299, and they're all inside under its slick powder-coated finish.
 
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$299 for a Harbor Freight winch or $579 for a Warn M8000 winch (which is arguably one of Warns most popular and most commonly used winches).

So yeah, you pay a little under $300 more for the Warn winch, but it's worth it in the end. With Warn you get a company who will likely never go out of business, has fantastic customer service, and will always be able to supply you with replacement parts once something goes bad.

When that Harbor Freight winch goes bad (which eventually it will), you'll just have to buy a brand new one (since HF doesn't sell replacement parts for it), and at that point you'll have spent a little more than a Warn M8000 will have cost.

I don't hate Harbor Freight, I have a ton of their tools. The issue I have is that I don't trust a lot of their speciality tools and equipment (i.e. winches, lifts, etc.).

If I need simply tools in a bind, I love Harbor Freight. However, I wouldn't trust a Harbor Freight winch pulling my Jeep out of a ditch in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure it would get the job done for most people, I just don't trust it personally.

It's built to a subpar standard in comparison to the Warn winches.

This is however merely my opinion. I totally respect yours as well.
 
So you tore the winch apart and got inside its motor, examined its bearings to find it uses bushings instead, checked into the metallurgy of its planetary gears, etc.? How did you arrive at the conclusion it is "very well built"?

Or did you really just look it over externally to find it has a nice powder coated finish and it is nice and heavy?

There are reasons why it sells for only $299, and they're all inside under its slick powder-coated finish.

You never know. Every now and then someone in China actually craps out something that's not too bad. Rare, but it happens.
 
You never know. Every now and then someone in China actually craps out something that's not too bad. Rare, but it happens.

Very true. Just depends on where it comes from in China, and the quality control that was overseeing the factory that produced it.
 
If I need simply tools in a bind, I love Harbor Freight. However, I wouldn't trust a Harbor Freight winch pulling my Jeep out of a ditch in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure it would get the job done for most people, I just don't trust it personally.

I despise HF but only because they exist because folks want to buy cheap tools that are straight knock-offs of good tools. If they didn't, HF wouldn't exist.

It's built to a subpar standard in comparison to the Warn winches.

It works exactly the same as the rest of the stuff from HF. While I'm no fan, there are a lot of them on the trails and I've yet to see one fail. But, I've also never seen one work as well as my very old HS 9500i. Further, if you aren't going to buy one of the faster Warn winches and are going to go with the very slow M8000, you may as well buy a HF or similar winch.

Let's face it, 95% of the folks just want some bumper jewelry. They don't care how fast it is, they don't care how reliable it is, all they care about is something is better than nothing and that sentiment is what pushes folks to own them.

What bothers me far more is the folks that have the latest and greatest Warn bolted onto the front of their rigs and then spend 45 minutes on an obstacle driving like a total idiot who is clearly in over their head and won't pull cable. You spent all that money and bought the damn thing, use it and quit making my life difficult.
 
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You never know. Every now and then someone in China actually craps out something that's not too bad. Rare, but it happens.
China has the ability to make winches that would blow anything Warn does out of the water. China doesn't do the specifications for the products, the companies that order the products set them and they don't specify the best because they aren't selling the best. They are selling a price point and in order to meet that price point, something in the specifications has to be lowered. They lower the quality of the parts, the amount of assembly time, the time spent on testing, QC, or fit and finish until they meet the price point and that point also has to factor in the additional freight costs to get it to the US.

The number one complaint by Chinese companies to US vendors is why they want the cheap crap instead of the good stuff they can build.

Don't blame China, blame the US customers who want products built at a specific price point first and then quality second.
 
Don't blame China, blame the US customers who want products built at a specific price point first and then quality second.

Sounds exactly right to me.

I think that's why China gets a bad rap. So much of the stuff they put out is subpar quality, but that's not because they can't make it any better. It's because tightwad Americans want stuff as absolutely cheap as they can get it.
 
China has the ability to make winches that would blow anything Warn does out of the water. China doesn't do the specifications for the products, the companies that order the products set them and they don't specify the best because they aren't selling the best. They are selling a price point and in order to meet that price point, something in the specifications has to be lowered. They lower the quality of the parts, the amount of assembly time, the time spent on testing, QC, or fit and finish until they meet the price point and that point also has to factor in the additional freight costs to get it to the US.

The number one complaint by Chinese companies to US vendors is why they want the cheap crap instead of the good stuff they can build.

Don't blame China, blame the US customers who want products built at a specific price point first and then quality second.

I totally agree. I've made the same points on occasion. We have a HF equivalent up here in Canuckland called Princess Auto. Most of the time I walk out of the store empty handed with a scowl on my face. But sometimes I get that same feeling on the Snap-on truck. I miss the days in the Navy where our tools, equipment, and parts were independent of the retail forces. We just thought they were normal sh*t - who knew? And funny how Warn winches were never put on an alter 30+ years ago. Sure, they were well made but we expected that. Nowadays it's a minefield of turds you have to step over trying to find anything decent. My fault for being old enough to know better I suppose.
 
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<snip> I miss the days in the Navy where our tools, equipment, and parts were independent of the retail forces. We just thought they were normal sh*t - who knew? And funny how Warn winches were never put on an alter 30+ years ago. Sure, they were well made but we expected that. Nowadays it's a minefield of turds you have to step over trying to find anything decent. My fault for being old enough to know better I suppose.

I can identify with this... Who knew that the tools were were given to use in the Navy were something special? They were provided by the lowest bidder through the supply system. Fill out the paper work and wait for days to months before they showed up. It was like your birthday when the supply guys would notify you that some specialized tool you needed to work on a 30 year old piece of machinery had wended it's way through the supply system from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Unwrap it to find out that somebody, somewhere along the line had transposed a digit in the NSN. Wait for the supply guys to get motivated enough to send it back and attempt to obtain the correct tool only to find out that the last one available was shipped out to a repair ship in the Mediterranean six months ago. We built a lot of our own tools in the machine shop. I got so pissed one time that I ordered four Corvettes, various colors through the supply system. It made it's way all the way to Mechanicsburg and back. The supply officer showed up at morning muster hotter than a hornet with an approved purchase rec in his hand demanding to know who was responsible. I got a well deserved ass chewing out of it and then everyone had a good laugh.

That minefield of turds has been around as long as I remember.
 
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A winch is cheaper and faster than relying on another Jeep buddy or a tow-truck.

And @Chris it's the same concept of drugs in this country. People chastise Mexico, where the drugs come from, yet it's my stupid generation that is spurring the demand for such drugs. The concept remains true for many scenarios, and it's extremely irritating.
 
And @Chris it's the same concept of drugs in this country. People chastise Mexico, where the drugs come from, yet it's my stupid generation that is spurring the demand for such drugs. The concept remains true for many scenarios, and it's extremely irritating.

Yep, this is very true indeed.

One thing I've found that remains pretty strongly rooted US manufacturing is guns... and thank goodness for that!
 
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